[Palidian]

The gun on a German sub was a 105mm.


As for the rate of fire the crew may of been waiting to fire due to the rocking of the boat, I do this a lot in the Grey wolves expansion for SH3, however in SH4 the gun dose not roll with the ship, making hits easer.


I have not experienced an easy time sinking ships with gunfire, and I stated before it is taking 150-200 rounds to *hit* not fire to get a 100 to 200 ton ship to sink. 50 hits to sink a ship is reasonable for that size. Remember that merchant ship crews are not of military quality, and when the hits start coming in they suddenly remember that they have business elsewhere.


Remember the Nautilus had 6"\53 guns and they have a rate of fire of 6-7 rounds per minute. Did the Nautilus have both guns baring at all times?


A rate of fire of 25 seconds is better then the current 40 seconds. However I better simulation would be to allow a 15 to 20 second rate of fire, but have the gun roll with the ship.


The stock game became quite boring, when I stacked up 1 million tons by 1943 when I got a Belao and had to retire. Your mod is quite good, however there are some issues I have had, I have has a really hard time sinking ships, hitting a DD with 5 torps, and 150 rounds with the deck gun.


There are other issues, I get 100 yards away and start shooting, this is not quite reasonable, as a man with a rifle could start picking off my gun crew at that range, however the game does not cover that.

Originally Posted by Beery

Since a torpedo can sink a ship with one hit, such examples are not reliable, since the amount of damage done by the torpedo is unknown - it could be very little, making the gunfire all that was needed to sink the ship - or it could be enough to sink the ship on its own (after enough water entered the ship), making the gunfire superfluous.

We need to know what size the shells were in order to make a comparison with US WW2 subs. SS Carolina was 5,000 tons. She was sunk by gunfire from U-151's 105mm (just over 4") gun after the passengers and crew left the ship - making it impossible for the crew to do any counterflooding or damage repair. WW1 was very different from WW2 in this way and often a crew was allowed to abandon ship before a submarine attempted to sink it - this allowed gunfire to be much more effective because damage control was effectively removed from the equation - that's most often not the case in WW2. Still, U-151 still needed to fire 150 rounds to sink the liner - quite a lot, especially given that the liner had no damage control in effect. Also, I read a report on The History Channel that indicates that U-151 torpedoed the liner before using the gun to finish her off.

It depends on the size of the ship. Using my mod it's very simple to sink a ship with 40 rounds. Actually my rate of fire would pump 60 rounds into that ship in 30 minutes. That is enough to sink a small ship very effectively.

As for your assertion that RFB's ROF is 'unrealistic', where's your data? At this point I ask forum members to forgive me for getting a little annoyed when people say that my mod is unrealistic before they've done any research that proves that to be so. I have spent tens of hours researching this stuff and my figures are based on research that has been posted on these forums - research that has been called into question but never NEVER refuted. When people claim that there's a more realistic rate of fire they need to produce their evidence BEFORE they start badmouthing my work. Criticism I can take - in fact I rely on it to make a more realistic mod, but name-calling is not helpful. If you think my mod is unrealistic, prove it, THEN you can say that it's unrealistic.

People keep saying that, but the facts argue otherwise. RFB's deck gun is only broken, outrageously slow and weak if real guns were very weak, broken and slow. On March 25th 1943 USS Wahoo fired 80 shells in 39 minutes at a 1,000 ton freighter, 50 of those rounds hit and the freighter was sunk. 80 shells in 39 minutes is almost exactly RFB's rate of fire for its 4" guns (the type that Wahoo used). RFB will sink a 1,000 ton freighter with fewer shells than USS Wahoo used. Are you seriously suggesting that USS Wahoo was using a gun that was weak and slow? Are you saying Wahoo was 'broken'? Because in effect if you're saying those things about RFB you're saying it about all the subs on which RFB is modelled.

USS Nautilus had an even slower rate of fire. Here's an example from Nautilus' log:
"0703 M August 17, 1942, commenced firing on Ukiangong Point area on Makin Island. Covered area by shifting sights in range and deflection.
0711 M Checked fire.
0716 M August 17, 1942, commenced firing on ship anchorage area of Makin Island. Radio spotting circuit was jammed or ineffective. Covered area as thoroughly as possible by shifting sights in range and deflection as necessary.
0723 M Checked fire, a total of 65 rounds of ammunition having been expended."
That's 65 rounds in 15 minutes from two guns. That's 28 seconds per round per gun.

8-20 rounds per minute is possible and textbooks list the highest possible rate of fire, BUT such a rate of fire is not possible in combat, mainly for the simple reason that a gun in combat has to fire AT something and is trying to hit it. A test firing where the gun is being tested to see how fast it can fire uses no target and ammunition is already at the gun. That is not the case in combat. If RFB was a simulation of a gun firing in test conditions it would need to fire faster, but it isn't.

Also, 20 rounds per minute happens to be the rate of aimed fire that the Old Contemptibles (at the time the best trained infantry in the world) could maintain in combat during WW1 using the Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle, which had a magazine feed mechanism to aid in loading. To suggest that a submarine's manually-loaded 3" artillery shell could be loaded in combat at the same rate as a magazine-fed rifle round is quite simply ludicrous. Unless the shell travels from the ammo store (which is 10 yards or more away from the breech) to the gun at the speed of sound I just don't see how it would be possible.

Here are a few examples - a couple of them involve running out of ammo and disengaging or giving up and firing a torpedo:

Vogel in U-588 hit a 4,800 ton tanker with 2 torps and then spent 4 hours firing 200 rounds into it before claiming it sinking in flames - this ship actually survived.

Schacht in U-507 tried to sink a 6,800ton ship by gunfire after the crew had abandoned it but finally gave up and had to use a torpedo.

Wurdemann in U-506 used his gun on 7,000ton tanker and claimed it sunk in flames but the ship survived.

Rasch in U-106 hit a 5,000ton ship with 2 torps and then finished it off with his gun but it took 193 rounds.

Wiebe in U-516 sank a small 1,200ton coaster by gunfire - number of rounds is not given but it took him 20 minutes.

Examples of what a shell can do are not helpful. Of course a single shell 'could' sink a ship, given the right conditions, but a simulation cannot possibly simulate all possible conditions and SH4 imposes a set number of shells required to sink ships based on the area hit. This number has to relate to an average number of shells required to sink a ship of a certain size - RFB's deck guns achieve this.

Anyway, an 8" shell cannot possibly be equated to four 4" shells. Those 4" rounds don't have anywhere near the penetrating power of an 8" shell.

As for your destroyer, I've explained before why 5 torpedoes failing to sink a DD may be completely realistic - we have no idea how many actually impacted. As for the number of deck gun rounds, the first question it raises is 'Why on Earth is anyone duking it out with a DD on the surface?' It shouldn't even be possible to take on a DD with a deck gun. But even if somehow the DD is disarmed 150 shells is by no means beyond the realms of possibility if we assume that all those torpedoes were duds (which is quite possible in RFB - and was possible in reality).

As for rates of fire, what we need in order to get realistic rates of fire are actual combat experiences and all the ones I've found suggest a rate of fire of 25 seconds per round for sustained fire in combat conditions.

In short, if you don't like the guns in RFB don't use the mod. But don't claim RFB is unrealistic unless you can prove it.